


Detour: The Private LiveJournal of Bruce Wayne (aka patriciangothic)

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-13
Updated: 2004-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 07:17:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/353634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne is a road, Lex Luthor is a detour. [Originally written for The Smallville Diaries project.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detour: The Private LiveJournal of Bruce Wayne (aka patriciangothic)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first installment of a WIP fictional LJ; it is part of the ongoing real-time project called "The Gotham Diaries" which can be found at the following community: <http://www.livejournal.com/community/gotham_journals> \- Bruce's username is "patriciangothic" and this journal can be found at the following link: <http://www.livejournal.com/users/patriciangothic>

## Detour: The Private LiveJournal of Bruce Wayne (aka patriciangothic)

by Lexalot

<http://www.livejournal.com/users/lexalot>

* * *

Detour: The Private LiveJournal of Bruce Wayne (aka patriciangothic) By: Lexalot 

Summary: Bruce Wayne is a road, Lex Luthor is a detour. 

Rating: R 

Pairing: Bruce/Lex 

Disclaimer: If I truly and completely had, I wouldn't want them so very bad. 

Spoilers: Extremely vague for the first half of Season One 

Thanks: To sandram, lolitaluthor, and coffeejunkii who have all encouraged me to join this project and write Chloe (character LJ username "grlf_reporting") and then Bruce; you guys have supported me as Bruce's author one-hundred percent, and I cannot thank you all enough for that, as well as everyone else who reads and participates in The Smallville and The Gotham Diaries. 

* * *

November 7, 2003; 10:14 pm 

First entry. 

Online log, form of internal therapy, venting for the sake of keeping a record--whatever it's called, this really just means that I've discovered the only one I can talk to is myself. 

Maybe it's the scientist in me or maybe it's the detective... or maybe it's something else. In any case, this is how it starts: 

I've just made a deal that will give me the solid financial foundation I need to build my company. Wayne Enterprises will be a double-sided investment. The business conducted on the surface will generate profits, half of which will go to charitable causes, the other half will fund my side projects, an underground endeavor so grand that I believe it is my inescapable destiny, a greater thing than myself, and more daring than anything attempted before. 

My business dealing transpired between myself and a man I am not sure I trust, but I've seen to it that this can never backfire in the event that he turns on me. I did it for other reasons than to just further the process of achieving my primary objective. This temporary merger will afford me time with the son of this man, my former lover and "old flame," if I may use that very tired euphemism to describe all I have felt that has gone unsaid and unexpressed save for the occasional hint dropped in the interest of explaining my actions and behaviors, which I'll concede are entirely self-involved and passive-aggressive. 

He is as close as I have ever come to love, and his heart has been given away to another now that I have finally mustered the strength and desire to open up to him. This merely reinforces the principle I have long held that I was meant to live my life alone, never to share it with anyone, because all else might be lost therein, and that loss could encompass so much more than just the reprioritization of certain undeniable goals and the slippage of my razor thin sanity and impenetrable veneer. 

Life will go on in its usual emptiness for me. I think it's time I tried to focus upon the farcical relationships I have with women so I can better protect the reputation of myself and others around me in order to gain better public standing. Social deception is unfortunate, however purposeful and necessary. I am becoming of a single mind and aspiration. My ambition consumes me and my hope chokes with every step of this journey. Nevertheless, I will press forward into the darkness, and I will be reborn. The day is coming. I have awaited its arrival since my childhood, and now that it is so close, I'm consecrating myself to fate. 

The beginning will be the end of me. The end will only be the beginning... 

"And my soul from out that shadow shall be lifted nevermore." \- Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven" 

* * *

November 10, 2003; 7:27 pm 

I've stood among people whose sole purpose in life was to stand drowning in ridiculous extravagance until it smothered every ounce of personality they ever possessed. Every one of them a mirror for myself. The opposite, yet the same. Whenever I've been in a room, at a ball, with physical company, I've felt vacuous. Most notably, I feel isolated in any situation where another human being is present. 

There's a fine line between solitude and alienation, and Lex is that difference. My distance is no longer self-imposed, but otherwise inflicted. I know he looks at me and wonders why I submit to the dubious will of his father, but he cannot even begin to fathom my true reasons, nor are they anything I am likely to share with him, considering the probability of heartbreak and disgruntled circumstance. Ever the prisoner of undying lament, I am chained to all I hold sacredly clandestine. 

Meanwhile, he holds to his savior. What I wouldn't give for a savior of my own. Unfortunately, it is terrifyingly clear that I have been beyond such salvation for quite some time. That contributed to my vision of Lex and I as similar souls drawn down into the abyss. How did my kindred spirit discover redemption? Worse still, why has he abandoned me to a lone descent? 

"A true friend stabs you in the front." \- Oscar Wilde 

* * *

November 14, 2003; 11:04 pm 

Clark Kent. 

Saviore Faire. Savoire Extraordinaire. 

I have bore witness to tremendous tragedies, the very first of which ripped my parents away and ruined my fucking life forever. This, however, was the first time I have ever witnessed a miracle. Until today, I was convinced such abstract ideas were the last refuge for the desperate, a hope built on imaginary and wishful pretenses that dissolved in a fog of dying faith. Clearly, I have been too quick to dismiss light as merely darkness in disguise. 

This boy, Lex's young savior and naive lover, unwittingly revealed himself to me to be something more than a normal teenager. Speed, strength and seeming invincibility, I suspect, are only the beginning of the story, but a secret is the understandable end. Etched upon his face lay all the fear and frustration of inadvertently exposing his abilities so I could acquire a taste for what he is capable of, which I suppose was his reaction because he would expect as much from me or perhaps even Lex. My appetite for knowledge did not stir, and when he caught no trace of that hunger, I believe he was satified. 

Nothing was said and volumes were spoken. Mendacity was born. When first we practice to deceive, the tangle seems to ensnare Lex at its very heart. It vexes me to harbor truth as a candle in the dark while my friend and former lover walks blindly around what he cannot see and thus does not know is there. The plainest truth here is simply that I can't make a gift of what belongs to someone else. The secret is not mine to tell, and so the knowledge will be kept in confidence as it was unceremoniously imparted out of forced trust born in adversity. Once again, the burden is mine to bear alone, and coincidentally, silence is my preferred language, my most self-defeating area of expertise. 

Facts. The savior with green eyes of jade and jealousy was watching me from somewhere afar. There was an absurd breech of security. There was outside intervention before I could act. A robbery was foiled. I am humbled. My replacement who has exceeded my previous intimate standing with Lex proved more worthy of his love than my expectations had dared imagine. More than heart, he has honor, and though his youth and inexperience encumber his maturity with naivete, those traits also grant him an innocence so pure that it is obscene. Humility it seems knows no end for me. 

I have seen the question tumbling in Lex's head all day. He suspects indefinably. He should know better than to wait for me to provide him with the answer. My deception will not be given a voice, and his doubt will not be given an audience. What turns the dagger in my raw wound is that I am now willingly placing Lex's new love between us, sacrificing even platonic proximity to protect the barrier that will reinforce this growing distance. 

On the other hand, considering our history of closed doors and broken windows, what is one more omission between friends? 

"The cruellest lies are often told in silence." \- Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque 

* * *

November 21, 2003; 12:28 am 

Friendship has never been my strong suit. I'm not so much a friend as I am a shadow. I am the dim reflection of irrational emotions I have long harbored for Lex. When he reached out to me in sentimental desperation, I felt solidarity for the first time since the abrupt end of our turbulent affair. I never even realized he made me feel whole until he separated from me and I became incomplete again. Another strange admission, because I hadn't ever seen myself as missing anything in the way of romance before he entered my life. 

The most insufferable thing by far is the abrupt absence of obstacles and the simultaneous presence of a moral wall that divides me from my self-indulgent will to take advantage. Clark is not currently in Lex's life, but I refuse to delude myself into thinking that Clark is not ever present in Lex's heart. My foremost instinct is to be of any comfort I can to Lex at this difficult time. Confusion has him gripped by the open wound, and though it would be too easy to seek to heal my gaping heart under the pretense of healing his, I resist. Fate is obviously merciless, seducing me into the trap well aware that I'll deny myself the pleasure of taking the bait. 

It would ruin most men to come this close to their dreams, to be under such precarious circumstance and not act on the opportunity, but I am ruined already. 

I've discovered two damning certainties. First, I love Lex more than I should ever even care for him. Secondly, it has never been Lex I've distrusted, but myself. 

Mired in this complicated internal conflict with light to offer but no freedom to shine, I get the distinct impression that I'm just an angel who cannot fly. 

"Friendship is Love without his wings!" \- Lord Byron, Hours of Idleness 

* * *

November 24, 2003; 6:35 pm 

A new beginning from an old end. 

Last night was the first time Lex has laid physical claim to me in what feels like an eternity. There's nothing that compares to knowing the pleasure of his company. The warmth of his body, the penetration of mine. I could ache for ages as a specter and his touch would give me form and purchase my heart back from the oblivion that stole it. He makes a gift of my soul and he doesn't even know it. 

Carnal knowledge like that of him on top of me, inside me, all over me, is granted license without reason. To bond and be a part of someone so quintessential to my very existence acts to cure my loneliness. While the world exists in black and white for me, he tells me my presence means something to him and suddenly I see color. We are together, and even though there are no boundaries to define that, that doesn't mean there is no substance to it. Whatever the slant, I do not feel alone. 

I offered myself to him without including my previous dependency in the bargain. My offer made amends for my mistakes in the past, not by wiping them from the slate, but by seeking to rectify the skew where once I went wrong. I made no demands of him, and bore the promise of an affair free from expectation and other undesirable tethers such as commitment. After much introspective and deliberation on my part, I found myself small and humbled, and now in the aftermath, I find myself content. Happy even. Had I known this was the course to happiness, I'd have veered from my chosen path long ago. 

I've sacrificed myself to the wisdom of compromise, and so I'm once again consumed, only this time of a muted flame. Somewhere between perfection and chaos I have come to rest comfortably. This self-adjusted perspective should surprise me, but it doesn't, because I have never known anyone as I have known him. I care more for him than I do anyone living in this world. He is to me what gravity is to the Earth. He grounds me in balance and centers me in spirit. He is my only true companion, and now I cannot help but feel that things between us are finally as they were always meant to be. 

My egocentric sphere of love cast aside, I am quite abruptly afforded the luxury of a soulmate again, despite the fact that I have never truly believed in such things until Lex. Our arrangement was not ideal to my aspirations, but being brutally honest with myself, I could not in all fairness love him and ask him to change for me. In light of this truth, I will happily take him as he comes. 

Reconciling the differences within my own self has always been the worst battle to fight. No matter what the outcome, I am the victor and a casualty, all in one. Realistic thought is the scourge of the romantic. It's funny; I never imagined any romanticism survived my short-lived and long-lost innocence. Nonetheless, rejection of both heaven and hell permits me to live somewhere in between. 

Perhaps the most important victory is the one I claimed in concession to what was killing me. 

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant 

* * *

December 1, 2003; 11:10 pm 

Nothing ever simple. 

I found Clark last night sulking in a veritable strategy room at the mansion. Lex's former teenage lover complicates me. He compromises my distance, the very same that I have cultivated with most in the name of my sacrosanct privacy. I violated my own boundaries, and I opened wide the door so he might see inside, even if for an instant. 

Why should I do such a thing? Perhaps sympathy is to blame. The mutual exchange of secrets and knowledge of one's own self probably. However, in the end, I must say I envy him the luxury to be so miserable when he has all he needs to be happy. When he confessed to envying me, emptiness in the shadow of his wholeness was all that prevented me from insane fits of laughter. I assured him there was nothing to envy. I told him about how I watched my parents die and live knowing their murderer was never even found much less punished. I opened the wound to show him, to prove to him how hollow my life is, my soul vanquished with it. 

I poured my insides out on an altar for him to bear witness. I would give anything I had to be him, to know this world through his eyes, to know existence as complete or half as innocent. I want to be him for one moment so I can taste something other than ash, to know what it is like to believe that superhuman abilities are my worst burden, to have my darkest side be a blush or a stain rather than charcoal and pitch. Love is the one condition we both suffer, and somewhere between our differences, we are surprisingly alike. 

To be strikingly similar creatures transcends even these levels of complication since the boy divulged the breadth of his secret, his true identity, who he truly is. Clark Kent is an alien, and by no stretch of my imagination do I believe it is anything less than a miracle that he is here or that he should be anything other than at peace with himself and this world. Alternatively, I am under no illusion that people are as accepting of such an idea as progress dictates they should be. Simply because a person is capable of reason, that does not guarantee they would utilize that fundamental skill. 

I do not preach what I know I fail to practice, though. Insight is the best of my wisdom, even if I seldom apply it to my own incessantly beating heart and the foolish behavior born of its bargain. After a carnal game fueled by adolescent testosterone played with Lex and his current female lover, I am left in the wake of my youthful recklessness. To be truly reckless, one must act carelessly, and therein lies the regression to my delinquent demons. Often is the case with love, albeit love in chains. At its core, the depraved menage was about Lex, about both my submission to him and my possession of him. 

As I explained to Clark, I do not have Lex completely in any way that matters. Saying I own him merely nourishes the truth in that lie that I am the one who is owned, a slave to my claim, a servant to my so-called property. Somewhere along the line, the tension between he and I eased to a level almost painfully comfortable. This is why I contend it is more beneficial to remain numb with cold than be touched by warmth again. 

I have everything I could possibly desire and nothing I need. No family, no love, no sense of home or peace, no strength that isn't borrowed from a very bleak and cavernous place, no natural talents save for an unhealthy amount of aggression with trained channels for outlets and an intellect that serves only to remind me how rarely I heed its better judgment. 

The last thing I ever expected was for him to openly connect, reveal, and even flirt with me. It's a cruel joke to be tempted by that which repels me. It is, after all, a natural reflex to shy away from the light when one can only survive in the dark. The most insufferable thing was seeing the hope in his eyes turn on me. 

It's heartbreaking to be that blessed. 

"Oh! How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes." \- William Shakespeare, As You Like It 

* * *

December 3, 2003; 1:01 am 

Forty-two; the number of hours I've gone without sleep thus far. 

Two; the number of problems on my mind keeping me awake, and the number of people relative to the number of problems. 

By no means or state of clouded consciousness do I imagine this is unique to the situation at hand, but this is undoubtedly a side effect of my internal conflict therein. Though I'll not deny that restlessness is in as ingrained in me now as breathing. I am an incurable insomniac. Sleep comes in dreamless waves for me. 

It's an unsettling thing to be incapable of dreaming. From the time I close my eyes to the time I open them again, there is nothing. When I am awake, that is when I dream. On rare occasion, something, some desire ignites a passion in me enough that I wish for its fullfillment, and so, a dream is born. 

I've already touched upon the ways in which Clark vexes me lately, so the other end of that spectrum is the original conundrum. Lex, who offered himself to me, who drew me into his game of corporate intrigue, who seduced me into a bed with a woman I despise, fucking her to free him. If I paused here to apply any rational commentary, it would be to state with an inordinate degree of irony that the only people who loathe her more than I do are Lex and Clark. Yet I engaged her in some sexual sport that I had abandoned with my hopes for a normal relationship with Lex back in high school. My morals are as ambiguous as ever. I am neither lost nor found. 

I had him. He gave himself to me. That alone is worth sacrificing my conscience, and I know that it shouldn't be. Lex's simple surrender of body, his anxious and insistent pleas for me to take him, his pleasure, his care. In return for anything I offer, I take the dream, gathering every imitation of love and plucking out all the weeds that surface in the midst of my green garden. It's the only place in me where hope grows. I'm sure Lex would find that bewildering, if not hysterical. 

I do not dare to cultivate that dream intentionally. It grows wild and achingly well of its own volition. To believe it does not hurt to hope is to believe in happiness without suffering and to know that there cannot be one without the other. I would say there is nothing wrong with being a dreamer if I ever slept. I would think there is nothing wrong with sleeping if I could then dream. 

That makes me wonder. If Lex and I are both awake, then why does it feel like one of us still has to wake up? 

"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly for you tread on my dreams." \- W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven 

* * *

December 8, 2003; 11:33 pm 

Love. In some unsculpted form. 

Mutuality. Lex showed me he loved me, and I told him the same. He used the act to speak what he could not, and I--I uttered the words for the first time in my wretched lone existence, uttering them because I no longer felt alone. I am something born so late in life that should have been nurtured in childhood but stirs in me now to awaken my decaying soul. Life springs from a thing long dead. Love has become a sun-kissed spot in the darkness. 

Tempestuous. I woke to find he had wandered, most likely in search of himself or to lose himself, as it is almost invariably one of those two. When my path caught up with his, he sat out on the balcony. We traded thoughts, memories, and bottled emotion. Messages inside, all of them read without opening the seal. Never has our relationship felt so natural. Having established this balanced rapport of unprecedented and unparalleled proportions, he offered me an exhibit of his affection and that was exactly what I took. I was practically in his lap, and I made the choice of exhibit his. I insisted on the balcony, an instinct of exhibition of my own. Lex's mouth swallowed me whole, and I stood there against the railing. He was on his knees before me, his every adept lick and move passionate, lavishly so, and he let me come down his throat. It was every bit the care he meant to communicate. 

Inarticulation. Feelings acted not spoken can be more powerful than any mundane proclamation. He made his gesture, and I made mine in turn. I assured him he did not have to profess some trite sentimentality. It simply wasn't necessary. The comfort there was so much more than telling, so far beyond previous compare. As I was lying at peace--at peace--I said I loved him. For no other reason than that I felt like saying it. 

In any form, this is my dream translated to reality, and I seek to be his just the same. 

"Love seeketh not itself to please,  
Nor for itself hath any care.  
But for another gives its ease,  
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair." -William Blake, Songs of Experience 

* * *

December 12, 2003; 10:52 pm 

"I love you." His words. 

But let me start sooner. 

The details of the past few days are rather simple. Too simple for all that has happened, because in the last twenty-four hours that the world has spun around more than once. 

First, I saw Clark walking home as I was driving by, and I gave him a ride home. In the car, he told me he had kissed Lex. He laid the truth bear in my lap. What else could I do but accept it? His choice to be forthcoming was disarming. Once the awkwardness of my initial stun and hurt wore thin, I accompanied him back to his home in an effort to ease the tension of his parents knowing that I knew his secret. That was another revelation he handed me in some accidental innocence that comes so naturally to him. 

Then, Lex unwittingly matched Clark's confession with his own. I had spent the day in a state of informal meditation, losing myself in the peace and warmth of Lex's solarium, a place he pays too seldomly a visit. I would frequent such an indoor sanctuary of natural tranquility if I had one. Then again, I would not be surprised if the manor has one and I do not even know it. Regardless of setting, Lex was quite discomfited, but I believe that was more a result of my reaction than the admission of cheating he handed me like some weapon he thought I would use to wound him. 

His candor undid me. I had been wondering if he would tell me. I knew I would not ask for fear of disturbing the blessed ease between us of late. I accepted the news so graciously that it seemed to unnerve him. It is my belief that he wanted to be blamed, but inconveniently, I did not feel like blaming him, or placing blame at all. There is some sympathetic compulsion in me that bids me to understand both Lex's point of view and Clark's, probably due to the experiences I have had that mirror each of theirs. As balance began to restore between Lex and I, as he realized I meant my forgiveness, as he witnessed the truest testament to my faith and love for him yet, the most inconceivably wonderful and unexpected thing happened. 

Lex said it to me. He looked right at me, and he fumbled a little, and then, the words just came, almost like he needed them to so desperately. He said, "I love you." That sentiment has been echoing in my head without fading in the slightest, endlessly repeating like a broken record ever since. I was in such shock that I had to blink, had to watch the raw emotion and panic in his eyes, had to feel my heart race--race, and I cannot say when it even started to beat again--to know the moment was real. 

I said it back, the second time I've ever said it to him, this time in response to the first time he's ever said it to me. Maybe even the first time he's ever said it, but I do not want to be carried away with this new romantic ego just to flatter myself. After that, it was a rush of passion that swept in to follow the consuming tide of Eros. I touched him, took him in my hand right on the concrete bench where we sat, made him come. I know he has a penchant for physical expression, and I am hoping my message was clear. He is first and foremost, paramount in my life, everything I worship and hold dear. 

I don't know how it ever evolved into something that so closely resembles a life I have dreamed of and long thought was well beyond my reach. My only care is that the dream now seems to have solidified into something so perfect that I can touch it, taste it, have it. Even if it all returns to hell tomorrow, I am on some threshold of heaven today. But nothing could make me give up on him. I made sure he realized that. He could not push me away if he tried. 

I have faith. In him. In us. In me. As it stands, little else is of any importance. 

"To err is human, to forgive, divine."  
\- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism 

* * *

December 14, 2003; 2:27 pm 

Definition of irony; that the one certainty in life is uncertainty. 

No matter how much of the world is in color, it seems some part of it is always gray. Even Heaven has dark corners. However, it remains Heaven regardless. 

There was ambivalence in Lex when he spoke those three quintessential words. I will not deny that I saw the fear in his expression, that I heard the anxiety in his voice. The idea that he is nervous about having made such an unwittingly commital proclamation is one I understand, and being brutally honest with myself, it is a side effect I knew he would suffer. Dread is an inescapable symptom of taking a step forward knowing you cannot step back again. 

Lex's obvious apprehension is no surprise. Since I never believed he would genuinely feel this strongly for me, I can only be grateful for his love and I am not inclined to question such a rare gift even if he does. Although I'm willfully ignorant of his doubt, I'm also mindful of his concerns. I'll do my best to assuage them, because any heartache I can spare him is a cause worth pursuing. My only desire is to bring him as much happiness as he has given me. 

I have faith in him. Now I only hope he can invest the same faith in me. 

"With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation out of the other." \- Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit 

* * *

December 16, 2003; 6:31 pm 

What am I doing? 

Alfred called from the manor. I suppose it's been longer than I realize since I last checked in. Seems my course through life has taken a rather unexpected detour. I've become so far derailed from my chosen path that my life only vaguely resembles what it was a few mere months ago. It's quite the difference a single emotion makes. 

Have I now cast my plans into the fire? Sacrificed them to a greater purpose I serve now? A good that serves myself more than anyone else? I've always been a shadow of a soul. Have I now become delusional to know form, to give myself substance? There is no doubt in me that I love Lex. But am I lost? Has the delicate balance I cultivated through self-discipline and self-motivation been toppled? My empty world has begun to spin the other way, and I have no equilibrium to judge one direction from the next anymore. But this is much deeper, much worse than just these thoughts. This internal conflict can be traced to a source. 

There is an inner demon that haunts me. It... frightens me. I had all but forgotten it as I stood at the gates of heaven entreating entry. Now that I have the key to my happiness, it stirs, resurrected with a vengeance. The cruelest twist of fate, I have spent several years embracing it, feeding its hunger, serving its will. Now I strive to deny it, deprive it, starve it, kill what I have created. The very thing I nurtured inside me, I am now struggling not to acknowledge. 

I aim to drown this thing that looms in my subconscious. I am fighting a war with an invisible enemy, and I'm holding onto a life that feels like it could not be any less my own. By foolish quest or quixotic love, I seek to redefine my world until this happiness is recognizably mine. However, this thing inside me knows the difference between the life I led and the one I suddenly find I am leading. I turn my back, but it's not this demon's presence that rakes through my mind. What plagues me is its silence. 

Why do I fear it is trying to say that the sunlight is not meant for me? 

"As I was going up the stair  
I met a man who wasn't there.  
He wasn't there again today.  
I wish, I wish he'd go away."  
\- Hughes Mearns, Psycho-ed 

* * *

December 23, 2003; 11:28 am 

RIP Thomas and Martha Wayne  
Murdered December 21st, 1989 

Grief sneaks up on the unconscious mind like a snake, and its bite is not felt until the venom overtakes its victim. 

Last week, I realized why my demon was walking darkened corridors of my mind. The anniversary was approaching. My parents died fourteen years ago this past Sunday. The annual holiday visit always comes in the week preceding Christmas. I died that day too, and I die every year on that day. It's a tremor in my soul that quakes on that day. I have been the rippling reflection of a phantom since the age of seven. 

This year, however, was different. This time is different than any other year before, because I have someone to be my comfort when I most hide that I'm in need of it. I asked Lex to accompany me home for twenty-four hours, during which we would visit the gravesite together. I never imagined I might share that experience, but things being as they are between he and I, I somehow felt I did not want to bear the experience without him. He knew how unique a request this was for me to make, and so he agreed to go with me. There has never been anyone I would take to such an intimate vigil, until now. Lex is my anchor to some place warm and lush with life, and were it not for him, my ship would sail into dark and dead waters, now more so than ever. He is my light in the fog. The vigil was full of outer peace and inner suffering as always, but Lex's mere presence shielded me from the full damage of the storm. 

There is a small tomb for my mother and father in the mausoleum at Gotham Cemetery, and every time I go, I bring a white rose. On the anniversary, I bring a dozen. On occasion, I visit the very spot where the crime that tore them away from me was committed, but not always on the anniversary. This year, I did not feel the need to go there in addition to the grave. 

Lex did not utter a word the entire time. We simply stood out in the cold and in the snow that always buries Gotham City long before winter officially begins. Were he not there, I would have descended into the shadows of my eternal mourning, and I would not have emerged for quite a while, or possibly not ever again. I have long feared that one year I would be lost completely to it, but to Lex's credit, it will not be this year. 

Last night, Lex informed me that Clark and his family have invited us to Christmas dinner at their farm. Us as in he and I. While I was surprised, it made sense to me in a certain way. It seems appropriate that they meet and get to know the two men involved in their son's life to various extents and degrees, but it is also quite fitting given the kind of considerate and amiable people the Kents are. 

While touched by the invitation, I am apprehensive about this forthcoming evening. I asked if Lex did not think he should go on his own, but he made a casual gesture of insistence and reassurance. Subtle but wholly effective. My concerns are these: one, that he might wish to share such a special occasion with Clark without my intrusion upon their friendship and complication of all else that remains an undercurrent between them; two, that I am not prepared to handle a Christmas celebration among a happy family that only serves to mirror every shattered dream I have ever known that haunts me still and worse yet at this time of year. 

I just don't know that I can endure seeing son with mother and father gathered together in the joyous and united spirit of the holiday. The mere promise of witnessing such a thing in its purest form threatens to break my heart. I will need Lex Thursday just as much as I did Sunday, but due to the circumstances, I cannot be sure of his ability to be my strength when he could be so preoccupied with keeping up his own strength in the face of his younger and more innocent love that he has none to spare. 

I feel as if I am going to my own funeral. 

"Cold in the earth - and the deep snow piled above thee Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!" \- Emily Bronte, Remembrance 

* * *

December 27, 2003; 12:24 am 

Christmas Eve was a bland corporate party; Christmas Day, Luthor and associated company was kept, followed by a heart-wrenching trip to the Kents'; Christmas Night, a sudden and terribly inconvenient snowstorm that made a long night that much longer, that much more insufferable. 

I could not have had a warmer reception. However, I might as well have slept out in the barn under a sheet of ice. It was all like a distant fire and I was left frozen so far removed from it. The experience hurt until my mind went numb. Clark's mother, Martha, made me brownies, and something that was as disturbing as it was comforting about that just skewered me. Clark gave me a globe with Metropolis inside attaching a verbal note that I would always have a friend here, and that healed my open wound as much as it served to make it sting at its most raw. 

Ever the insomniac, I knew sleep would not be coming for me that night, so I barely tried. When I arrived downstairs, Martha Kent was there, victimized by her own breed of restlessness. Solace should not have come, but it did in passing the night hours there with her, yet even that was agonizing. It proved to be the most painful part of the entire visit as well as the one thing that assuaged my discomfiture. Medicine can be excessively cruel when the symptoms rage against it. 

I wish I could say all the pressure was relieved when we parted from that place and the Kent family today, but there is a treacherous residue. It stems mostly from knowing Lex and Clark were struggling with their own tension during our stay there. I had no mind to think of it, and I still don't. I witnessed their kiss this time, and ironically, I couldn't bring myself to care, mired in my own sentimental swamp. Now, though, I mean to intentionally put childish things away. Jealousy and anger simply do not belong here at this moment. I am with Lex, and I aim to enjoy such a good thing, because as I am discovering, such things are not meant to last. 

Christmas has never felt so bleak or cold as it did this year, save for once before. My only consolation is that Lex is spiriting me away to Europe. France, Spain and Italy to be precise. This is a getaway I sorely need for I feel like this place has gone dark since the holiday. 

"It happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of winter." \- Joseph Addison, The Spectator 

* * *

January 5, 2004; 1:33 am 

A week that almost resembled a whole other lifetime has ended. Even though being back in Smallville with Lex means being immersed in conflict again, our escape served well to take the edge off the friction. Particularly because of Madrid since, as we were eating there, Lex spilled a bittersweet taste of his soul to me over alcohol and tapas. 

He spoke of Clark and of me, both concerning love as he so foolishly fumbled to define it. He cannot wrap his mind around anything that cannot be swiftly analyzed, categorized, and dissected until it barely exists anymore. He has unwitting difficulty with the abstract. 

He doesn't understand how he could love two people at once, and he is constantly torn over issues of the heart that simply don't divide the way he aims to conquer. 

He made several admissions, a few of which actually surprised me. The first was not one of them, however. He confessed there was another kiss between he and Clark, one which was not broken by him or his will to break it, and when he failed to fracture my stride imparting that to me, he sank deeper into his philosophical reverie. 

The best I could manage in way of an answer was to describe love as I have always known it. Ambiguous and blind, boundless, carrying no allegience to logic or obedience to will, characterized only by depth and mystery. 

By chance or correlation, this seemed to lead Lex to a conclusion that he probably only voiced out of impaired judgment and weakened defenses. He told his impressions of me when we first met back in boarding school, and all of them were quite flattering. His words seduced me beyond the heavy topic at hand, but none more so than when he uttered that he believes he has always been in love with me in some way. 

I took him in the alley out back, laid eager claim to his body as he invited the attention. He was intoxicated by drink, and I by something excessively gratifying that rang like vindication. Love starved is ravenous when fed. 

Though I never dared dream this vividly, I am starting to believe he really has loved me all along. And if that's true, then it's likely that it will be just as true always, and he will continue to love me. No matter what happens. 

"It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what that feeling is." \- W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies 

* * *

January 10, 2004; 12:37 pm 

I'm a prisoner. Of love and hate. Of demons and angels. 

There are walls of my own making, but even if I escaped, where would I flee? I lock myself inside because I am locked out of any safe haven where I would seek shelter. 

Lex is a dying end. The void is chasing me, and I'm losing the strength to outrun it. I feel it. I feel it rushing to swallow me, and I reach for Lex, for the anchor that has kept me from being pulled under the turbulent waves these last two months, and there is nothing there. Now the tide is coming. And there is nothing to stop it. 

I was foolish to see light in the dark. My most intimate fear has long been that it was a mirage, an oasis of my own making in the wasteland of this existence. Yet I cling to it like a person frightened of death clings to life. I have not been afraid to die since I was a very young child. But this terrifies me. 

No knife is so sharp and jagged as truth. No wound is so crippling as this morbid reality. There is no sanctuary. There is no paradise. There is only this hell, and that is all there ever shall be. 

I never believed I would feel so cold at twenty-one. It should take a lifetime or two to become this bitter. I had thought that once a heart was broken, it should stay that way. In my worst nightmares, I never dreamed that it could break every minute of every day, and repeatedly shatter as if it were made new just to be broken again. The pain renews itself with each moment, and I fall weaker. I'm slowing, and it's only a matter of time before the opportune fiend inside catches me. 

Lex and Clark are a temple I can see through the bars of my cell. My own mind betrays me, because it has become more and more lamentably clear that that's where they belong, together. And this, this soul asylum is where I belong, alone. Otherwise, anyone fool enough to love me, I would be a fool to condemn here with me. And knowing any two as fortunate as they to be so desperately and mutually in love and obviously meant to be that way, I would be fortune's fool to stand between them or such a higher force. 

Meticulous deliberation is necessary now for it takes time and care to dismantle the crutch on which one stands. It requires certainty and an immunity of emotion to discard something one has held so dear. I am far from ready to reliquish the only salvation I have ever known, but it is evident that I must concede the fight for it sooner or later, because I stand absolutely no chance of winning. 

The impending loss is already the harbinger of a looming tempest. Parting is as merciful an act as it is ruthless, and though the resulting acidic mix is undesirable, it is wholly necessary. Everything ends badly, or else it would never end. People do not wake from dreams; they are wrenched from them. 

"What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!" \- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables 

* * *

January 12, 2004; 11:07 pm 

The hardest choices are often the ones we are better for making. Then what does it say that this is the most difficult choice I have ever had to make? Twenty-four hours from now, Lex and I will no longer be together. 

Saturday night was our first rendezvous since Lex withdrew into his private torment. There he confessed the kiss that shook what was left of the foundation on which this relationship stands. Similar news had come twice before, but this time it shook me so violently because I had never felt like I was losing him until now. This morning was our second meeting. There he let part of the facade tumble and he finally confided truth in me. Truth that revealed just how much he needs Clark, how much he loves Clark, and how painful it is for him to understand that he is hurting both of us. Love conquers all and ruins all. The difference is the same. 

I built my castle upon sand and now the ground is eroding out from under it. It will not weather this storm. It almost caved in upon itself today. I wanted to end his suffering and I knew I could have by ending this thing that used to be us and is now caught in a quaking divide. This fault continues to open and it will swallow us both whole if I do not act swiftly, but my courage waned. 

He is not ready for it to come. I was not ready. But I am now. Tomorrow I will go to him for the third time, and I will sever our romantic ties once and for all. Lex has always made me feel alive, like a person rather than a thing. He makes me feel when normally I would not want to, and he makes me want to feel everything. He inspires love in me, and that hearth has never been lit by anyone else and I suspect it never will be again. 

If I had a thousand lifetimes to get it right, I would give him the world, but it would not make him mine. It is noble to set free that which one loves. But I do so knowing that there is no hope of him coming back to me. And I do not know if that is honor or lunacy. Whatever else it is, I know one thing beyond any selfish shade of doubt; I could not live in good conscience otherwise. It's not a better thing I do, but it is merciful. 

I will love him forever, and keep him somewhere hidden in my heart. There I will lock the memory safely away and it will not be tainted by time. I will love him until my last breath, and tomorrow, I will leave him. I will lose him rather than have him lose his chance to be truly happy with the one he loves in a way that is paramount to how he loves me. I do know that he loves me, and for that, and for the last few months, I can only be grateful. 

I've had time to prepare. My foresight has long predicted this time would come. If I were only able to be angry, if I could exchange my love for hate, letting him go would not slice into my soul and cut the tether to my shore. I'm doomed to drift until the current carries me far from land, from rescue, into solitude and bled dry of my warmth. I've accepted that this is my destiny. And I submit, heading blindly towards it in silence. For the greater good, I go peacefully, and it is for his peace that I go. 

"This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper."  
\- T.S. Elliot, The Hollow Men 

* * *

January 16, 2004; 4:08pm 

Home. Private hell. 

My demon reigns here, and I feel like I've returned to him. I have come back to embrace the darkest manifestation of my nightmares, and it opened its arms to welcome me. The demon swallowed me in its black shroud of comfort and my soul is being transformed in that cocoon. 

The birth of something new, something stronger of mind, more independent of heart, and less than human is being bred in the cold womb of my psyche. I have surrendered myself to it, as I had resigned to do since the day that tore my parents from me. However, my demon had not counted on Lex. Lex, who made me feel warmth and the beating of my own heart, who let me know life. But no more. Despite that detour down the road more traveled, I have come full circle to my true path, the one that lies deep in dreary and tangled wood. 

My focus became clear the moment I crossed the threshold onto my domain alone. The last time I had visited my own domicile, Lex had accompanied me and his mere presence prevented me from sinking into hell, kept my ambitious demon from dragging me down into the cave that I have long known lies under my property, that I have tried to block from memory these last few months. One cannot deny one's own nature, one's genuine purpose, and mine is not to love. I rebelled against this notion out of desperation, but I have accepted it now. 

The short-lived dream of my relationship with Lex ended as death delivered in an act of mercy. Our hearts were speared by a sword, and we were dying but not dead. I merely drove the blade the rest of the way through, impaling our love until it had ceased to persist in its stubborn illusionment. When we parted, it was on congenial and mutual terms, which is more than I could have hoped would come of this end. 

My last act in Smallville was to descend upon Clark and perform my final farewell. I told him he should take care of Lex, because he needs Clark. Lex belongs with Clark, and unfortunately I have never been blind to that truth. But Clark better be good to him, because I know where he lives. 

There is one last thing. Before leaving Lex behind, I rescued him from the latest pitfall of fate that trapped him. I had begun to think my position in his life expendable. But this incident as well as our last interludes have offered me hope in this vein. Perhaps in some way or another, I am his savior after all. 

Whatever the case, this door is closed, and another one will open. The key to a door I locked long ago will take me to the place I am meant to be. My destination is in sight, and it has possessed me. When it takes hold, I will be captive somewhere bewteen redemption and damnation. This is the road I will walk from this day forth. Resigned to the fate of my own choosing, I enter eternal purgatory. 

"Parting is all we know of heaven  
And all we need of hell."  
\- Emily Dickinson, Parting 


End file.
